Make Ahead

Pasta, Chard & Fontina Torte

by:
December 24, 2015
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0 Ratings
Pasta, Chard & Fontina Torte
Photo by At Home with Friends
  • Serves 8-10 People
Author Notes

Baked pastas are always great as part of a lunch buffet. This one is both vegetarian AND gluten free. I wanted to come up with a way to use brown rice pasta that tasted as good as regular pasta.

You can use spinach or chard or kale. I love to buy bags that have all three mixed. I always have them in stock, which makes this recipe perfect for when I need to clean out my fridge.

Because this is made in a springform pan, it looks impressive when served. You can use your imagination and tweak this to your taste. You can switch out the fontina for cheddar and the Parmesan cheese for gruyere. You can add more vegetables like diced red pepper or hot peppers if you want to spice it up. It’s also great as a main course dish served with just a salad.

This can be made and baked one day before. Store covered at room temperature, overnight. Store leftovers in the refrigerator for 2 days, if they last that long. —At Home with Friends

What You'll Need
Ingredients
  • 1 1/2 cups chopped onion
  • 2 gloves garlic, crushed
  • 1/4 cup sun dried tomatoes, rehydrated in warm water and diced
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 5-oz. bags chard, spinach, kale or combo, roughly chopped
  • 10 ounces fontina cheese, rind discarded and cut into 1/4-inch cubes
  • 2/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1/2 cup gruyere
  • 6 large eggs
  • 1/2 cup heavy cream
  • 1/2 cup mascarpone cheese
  • 1 teaspoon salt and pepper, to taste
  • 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
  • 1/3 cup Kalmata olives, chopped
  • 2 scallions, chopped
  • 1 pound brown rice penne pasta
Directions
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees with rack in middle.
  2. Butter a 9-inch springform pan or line inside of pan with reusable parchment. Wrap outside with foil, to catch any possible leaks.
  3. Cook onion, garlic and rehydrated diced sun dried tomatoes in large saute pan with olive oil. Add red pepper flakes (optional), and salt and pepper.
  4. Add roughly chopped greens and toss to evenly distribute onion mixture and greens are slightly wilted. Set aside in large bowl.
  5. Cook pasta according to package directions just until al dente. Drain in a colander. Toss with greens and add Parmesan cheese and fontina cheese. Mix until well combined. Add Kalmata olives and chopped scallions.
  6. In a blender, combine eggs, heavy cream and mascapone cheese. Blend well. Pour mixture into bowl with pasta and greens. Mix well.
  7. Pour into prepared springform pan. Bake until set, approximately 50 minutes. After 25 minutes, check pan: If pasta is getting too brown, loosely cover with foil.
  8. Cool in springform pan on a rack at least 10 minutes. Remove sides of pan and serve torte hot or room temperature.
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1 Review

LeBec F.
LeBec F. January 1, 2016
athome, some of the things I love about this are:
--brown rice pasta: so important to get cooks to move into whole grains!
-- you store it overnight at room temp. I'm sure some will disagree, but I really feel that many cooks would benefit from being more relaxed about food safety. (It strikes me as a bit of 'first child' syndrome, where one is much stricter with all kinds of things- with one's first child, and more relaxed on the same issues- with the second child.) Your overnight-on-the-counter dish will have the moist, soft texture that best shows it off.
After that, I would still be comfortable giving leftovers a refrigerated one week's shelf life. Congrats on this !